


The Man from the Mountains: Parting

by NatatBlue



Series: The New Unbreakables [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Military, Gen, No Magical Animals, No Sex, Plot, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2479136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NatatBlue/pseuds/NatatBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taurin, the son of a peasant and a defeated nation refuses to bow to the conqueror and accept his fate. He yearns for a world where the pride of his country is not ensnared in the mists of despair, where Tamor is again guarded by her Seven Peaks and the ancient order of the blessed. With the bravery of the young and untried, Taurin wins a place at a prestigious Alliance military academy, a foreigner in the bowels of the Alliance mighty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man from the Mountains: Parting

**Author's Note:**

> This is a standalone chapter from the upcoming revised novel. This is not the same series as was originally posted here as The Unbreakables, even though it shares its origins.

**The Man from the Mountains**

**Except—Parting**

Levana folded the newspaper around the packet of sandwiches. She’d made a dozen; she hoped that would be enough. The house smelled of the spices and peppers that had flavored the lamb. Out her window she could see the cilantro and mint and the crimson of the tiny fiery pepper. Fall would be here soon, and the bounty of the short Tamorian summer would need to be dried and hung on the exposed beams for winter. Taurin should be here to help. He, the middle son, should strengthen his father before settling into marriage and life as a herdsman, but Taurin was different.

Levana had known almost from his first cry that her middle son was blessed by the gods. Maybe she had even known in pregnancy. The old believers claimed such knowledge was possible. Rafael and Aneurin had been easy pregnancies, but Taurin’s had been a constant struggle. Her limbs had swelled, the morning sickness had refused to abate, and the pain of his birth had torn through her like lightening striking the tall trees. The midwife had called for cool cloths and herbal tea and tried not to look panicked.

Levana remembered bringing that swathed bundle to her chest and kissing the tiny forehead with its strands of fair hair. She remembered the first look of her son’s eyes. Even newly ejected from his warm home, power bled from his newborn eyes and scrunched face. She’d known then; nothing had surprised her as her boy had matured to the cusp of manhood. He was the prince. He was Tamor’s destiny, the prophesy and future promised by the gods of the Seven Kingdoms. Her son, who was now leaving for the heart of the enemy, was her future, her entire nation’s future. 

Taurin had been born the middle son just as the legends had described. Levana was from the most ancient stock of the kingdom, most of her family destroyed in the Great Slaughter at the hands of invading Alliance of Free Provinces, a grand name for a country that pressed on their borders from the lowlands and seas to the west. It had swallowed the ancient kingdoms of Kaltas and Morzan into its ceaseless hungry mouth. Tamor’s geography and warrior philosophy had protected her for centuries, her mountains cruel to lowland armies, her warriors fierce, but she fell. Tamor’s warriors had swords and spears and the famed archers; the enemy had primitive guns and cannons that they’d dragged up the narrow mountain roads. The losses had been terrible. Some argued that Tamor lost one quarter of her population that terrible summer and following winter. The losses had not only been the soldiers, but the villagers who had fled from the fire of the enemy. The country was burned, villages destroyed, crops ruined, sheep slaughtered. According to the legends, the mighty rivers had run red with blood and the peaks that guarded her people had been obscured by the fires raging in the villages. It had been an apocalypse. Three hundred and fifty years they lived under the barbarians’ boot; traditions lost, destroyed, obliterated by the victor.

The Blessed, the word still made people look over their shoulder and speak in muted whispers. They’d been hunted, driven to be outcasts among their own people, blamed for the Great Slaughter, terrorized by the conqueror. It was no longer death or slavery to identify with the Blessed. Reforms had reached out into even the most distant provinces of the behemoth state from the gilded walls of its capital fifty years ago. Autonomy had been promised; Tamor had been lauded as the bulwark against aggression from the Alliance’s historic enemy that licked hungrily at its exposed flank. A handful of Shinzar temples had been preserved, and the ancient language was again taught in schools without fear of beatings, but it was a pretty coat of paint on a house that needed a new roof. She was old enough to remember the slaughter in the capital of those who had taken the reformers at their word. Peaceful protestors gunned down and branded as enemy agents.

Her brother had joined the reform movement. He hadn’t been Blessed, but he had been outspoken and well-educated for a Tamorian. He’d graduated from their national university with a grant from the state, and he’d organized and spoken and raised people’s awareness. He’d died in a mysterious traffic accident. Now her son was leaving for the Alliance. Would he ever be back? Would he die away from the cradle of his birth and his people?

She mustn’t cry. She wiped her face on her apron and moved to the oven to take out the last of the cookies. It was hot today and her sweat mixed with the tears she couldn’t hold back. The cookies stared back at her, a reminder of happier times. These were a winter cookie studded with nuts and dried fruits, but they were Taurin’s favorites. He wasn’t going to leave home without them; he might never taste them again. She spread them across the cooling rack, the mechanical motion of baking soothing to her soul, but also a poignant reminder that her son would no longer be here to enjoy the meager bounty of the table. 

He’d already been away much of the time. He’d been at school in the Tamorian capital, a three hour drive for them as the first two hours were over rutted dirt and gravel roads. A teacher, a young, earnest man from the Second Province had begged for Taurin to go to school beyond the village school where the children started drifting off at twelve to supplement their parents’ income and where no one remained beyond the official school leaving age of fourteen. The school in Tingrit had been mostly Alliance children, sons and daughters of bureaucrats and businessmen. Taurin rarely spoke of it. He’d said he was the only Tamorian in his grade and was silent about friends. Levana had seen the cut lip and the bruised knuckles as well as her boy’s eyes turning hard and piercing. He never spoke of friends. He had done well at school, but even that had been met with tight-lipped stares. They’d made the trip for his graduation and sat outside with the peaks of Tamor rising in the background and heard a speech in Unified. She’d seen the headmaster flinch as he shook Taurin’s hand as he took one academic or athletic prize after another, and she’d seen the flash of triumph in Taurin’s face before he’d hid it with the expected eyes down blush of a peasant being held up beyond his station. 

Levana hadn’t known her son was applying to the leading military academy in the Alliance until winter break when a man in uniform with silver pips on his shoulders and a blue beret in one hand had knocked on the door and asked in broken Tamorian to speak to her son. She remembered Taurin coming in from the barn, unlacing his boots and brushing the hay from his pants. He’d held his hands near to the stove as he’d studied the soldier, his eyes unwavering and unashamed.

“I’m Taurin of Tamor.”

The officer had drawn a deep breath. The blue beret meant that he was an Unbreakable, and he must know what such a declaration meant. A small detachment of the Unbreakables often rotated through Tamor. Alliance soldiers were not welcomed, but Unbreakables were considered honorable, and the few masters who poked their head above the surface as the laws had loosened suggested treating them with the respect that would have been offered ancient but honorable enemies.

“You will not be treated well,” the officer had said in a deep voice, He was a man used to power and control, but he wasn’t Blessed. He’d held his ground as a seventeen year old boy had gazed at him with clear hazel eyes, but his stance was habit and discipline. Her son’s power had licked at his very being.

“All Tamorians know that. I am an Alliance citizen. Are you too going to forbid what is promised all? Have they sent a man of honor to deliver words of no honor?”

The soldier hadn’t answered. He’d just pointed to the back of the house and they’d gone behind closed doors. They must have talked for an hour before Taurin without a word had grabbed his boots and jacket and headed back outside. The officer had stood silently in the kitchen, obviously waiting for an opening.

“Yes?” Levana had tilted her head up and placed the kettle on the stove.

“You will allow him to go?”

Levana had nodded once. She had a warrior son. He had to go. There was nothing in Tamor for him, the masters splintered and still half hidden, the country impoverished, the family who should have carried the sacred burden long gone into the mists of time. The prince of Tamor would be trained by the enemy.

“I cannot refuse him admission,” the soldier had said in a soft voice. “I am here only as a local representative of the military and the academy and hold no place on the admissions committee. His credentials are all superior, and I will not invent something to torpedo the boy. I am an Unbreakable; we are men of honor.” The officer’s voice softened even more. “I am not stupid. I know you have seen little honor from the Alliance. I also know what your boy is. He is still only one foot out of childhood and it swept through me like a sharpened bayonet, and I am not powerless. He is a Blessed.”

Levana had schooled her features into neutrality. Officially, Shinzar was no longer forbidden and the Blessed no longer faced arrest as a dangerous and subversive element, but official policy and reality were two different and opposing faces. Alliance officials mistrusted the Blessed, and the mistrust was more than mutual. Official repression was still within everyone’s memory. A few of the bravest and most outspoken in the tiny Tamorian political class had suggested that the Alliance might consider an official apology and perhaps even reparations. They had immediately been ridiculed and harassed for their desire to promote inequality. The entire campaign had been mind boggling in its duplicity.  

“He will be granted acceptance,” the officer continued, “unless they completely disregard his talents, which I believe is unlikely as the government is officially promoting an anti-discrimination policy. Officially rejection for race, creed, or religion is forbidden, but reality is always far behind policy.” The man spun his distinct blue beret in his hand. “I know where this came from,” the officer said, his eyes falling on the beret, “but we aren’t ready to acknowledge it. We aren’t ready to admit what we stole from you. We are far from the promised equality, not only here but also in the Alliance proper. Your son will not be met with joy. He is braced for the hardships, but they might be beyond his imagination. Rejection might be a happier outcome for all of you; acceptance will not bring joy. They will go after his soul. Tell him to keep his head down and save himself. He will not listen to me, but he might listen to his mother.”

“Sir?” Levana had asked carefully. She wouldn’t allow herself to be trapped here where her words could be used against her later, used to frame her son.

“There are other ways to build Tamor. Maybe he should take them.”

“He is a warrior.”

The man’s smile had been wry, a twitch in a usually impassive face. “Don’t think I didn’t notice, ma’am. I spent an hour talking to him. Tamorian warrior, Tamorian Blessed. What does he mean to accomplish? He will be no serf to our government.” His voice rose in a question.

Levana had shaken her head and turned back toward her stove, raking the glowing embers and adding wood. This must never be spoken of. She didn’t even speak of it with the villagers. Her son meant to be prince, would be prince, but such a title was far too dangerous, and here was a stranger with black hair and olive skin using the word.

“The warrior of Tamor. May the gods help us all if we are still the enemy.” His voice had become flat and official. “The academy will inform you of their decision within a month. Thank you for allowing me in your home.” He’d turned and walked out.

Levana busied herself placing the cookies in a bag. Two dozen should be enough for the two day train ride. He was leaving. Torturing herself with such memories was pointless.

“Mother.” His voice had changed last year, deeper, softer, soaked in authority. His finger stroked her cheek, catching the wetness. “You know I must go.” He smiled, his eyes shimmering, their classic hazel coloring glittering with gold specks. “I’m used to them not liking me. It will be like school. I have half a brain and I can kick their asses. They’ll grudgingly respect me, and that’s good enough.”

“Taurin.” She pressed her son to her bosom. He was now taller than her, but he was still her precious child. “They’ll hate you.”

“I will not hide like the masters of Tamor,” Taurin said in a scoffing voice. “I am the prince. I must train to be a warrior. I must prove myself.”

“Taurin, we may carry the blood, but the prince is dead, burned by the infidels and invaders.”

“No, Mother.” He caught her chin in his work roughened hands. “You taught me who I am. I will not cower in fear. We have cowered too long. I am the middle son. I know the prophecy. ‘From the time after the fire, in the ash and sorrow that blankets our kingdom the second son will carry the mantle.’”

“It’s a legend.”

“Mother,” he said, exasperated. “Of course it’s a legend. I’m not crazy like that old master from Granon. I know the gods aren’t running around on the top of the peaks fornicating like rabbits.”

“Taurin,” she snapped. “Don’t desecrate your heritage.” She jerked away from his grip. Several masters had pleaded with her and her husband to bind Taurin over for training, and she had refused, considering them unworthy of her son, but his words stung her conscience. A master didn’t speak ill of his nation.

“I am Taurin of Tamor,” Taurin said in a voice that carried across the kitchen. “I am Tamorian, but I live in the modern world. We have electricity as well as fire. We have walked on our moon and split the atom. I won’t be an ignorant sheep lover. I will be prince, but of a modern Tamor, not an ancient, broken down hack. I will make Tamor proud again. I promise you, my mother as my witness, Tamor will rise again.”

 

 

Levana stood on the platform. The train would load in a few minutes. Their little village didn’t have a real train station just a platform and a three sided shelter against the weather. Tickets had to be bought from the post office or the conductor. This was the local; Taurin would transfer to the interprovincial railway in the capital.

The small knot of people looked like they always did, peasant women in their skirts and shawls with baskets of eggs or vegetables and men heading for a week of work in the city. They were in work boots with sunburned, muscled arms showing below short sleeves and heavy gloves stuffed into their back pocket. Taurin was standing alone. He had turned himself so he faced the peaks that had almost entirely lost their snow in the summer sun. Aneurin, his younger brother was watching him. He was standing with Rafael, the eldest, but his eyes were only for Taurin. His eyes had always been only for his brother. Aneurin was Blessed, the holder of the fire to Taurin’s sword, the calm shield to Taurin’s aggression and determination. 

Levana should be celebrating the blessing of the gods. She had birthed two Blessed sons, but as she stood waiting for the train she felt more cursed than blessed. Taurin was leaving for the heart of the enemy. He swore he’d be back as a Tamorian warrior, but the boy was young. He would have to survive hardships that Levana couldn’t imagine or didn’t want to imagine. Even the citizens of the Alliance who meant to be kind were cultural warriors. Taurin was a foreign man. No citizen of the Alliance would understand the Blessed. Hopefully they wouldn’t recognize the Blessing. They would fear Taurin, and fearful people attacked. For Aneurin it was the opposite. They spat on the partner who knelt; they declared him weak and unworthy. Even in Tamor, the Blessed were restrained. She’d been told in Tingrit that the Blessed would only kneel in the privacy of their own home. Here in the countryside, the displays were more open, but it was the old and the broken who showed themselves. Levana knew no young Blessed besides her own two sons. Maybe there were others, hidden as the Blessed had been for years, or maybe they were gone, lost in the foreign sea that crept from the Alliance and spilled into Tingrit and into all of Tamor. She didn’t know. She only knew that even her son was reaching for the enemy. 

Aneurin approached his brother, his step tentative until Taurin reached for him. Taurin wanted to hug him. Levana saw his arm slip around his younger brother, but Aneurin went to his knees and pressed his head to Taurin’s feet. Levana froze; people were noticing. Taurin was dressed for the Alliance, and his hair was trimmed to an almost impossible shortness which hid the sandy color, but the boy at his feet gave it all away. Aneurin was a child kneeling for his brother. This was a scene from ancient time, a master taking leave of a boy in his protection. Taurin wasn’t yet a master, but his power already surged and sparkled. The buzz of conversation on the platform fell into silence as eyes focused on the two boys. A policeman, not a local, moved from the edge of the platform where he’d been patrolling both the people and the street, his hand wavered over the gun at his hip.

Taurin pulled his brother to his feet. He was still young, coltish, with a narrow waist and shoulders that still looked like they were going to spread, but he turned to face the policeman as a man not a boy. He pulled his brother against his chest. He didn’t need to speak; everyone knew he was determined to protect. A woman with a bulging basket of breads and cakes stepped in front of the policeman, babbling something that made little sense. Two of the men heading off for labor in the city moved closer. They were the biggest of the men. These were not gentle or soft men. They had survived on Tamor’s rock where each day was a struggle. Life was cheap for them, especially the life of a foreign policeman.

“There is nothing to arouse your concern.”

Levana almost started at her own son’s voice. She rarely heard him speak in Unified as they spoke Tamorian in the home. His voice rose and spread across the platform with authority.

“I am leaving for many years. Allow my brother and me to part.”

Levana didn’t know if it was the power of her son’s voice or fear of the two laborers who looked like they longed for an excuse to beat up a foreigner, but the policeman turned and pretended to look over the railing as if concerned about the broken drainpipe that had been broken for as long as Levana could remember. The two men moved closer, each step a silent threat.

“No,” Taurin demanded. “Let me remember this day in peace, not with blood. Let them know our mercy as they give us none. Let him go home and remember how lucky he was today.”

“He’s an ass,” one of the men growled.

“Yes,” Taurin said, his gaze never wavering, “but we value our livestock.”

The crowd laughed and one of the men spat on the ground before turning back. 

“It’s be kind to animals’ week,” the other man said, turning away and taking his friend with him.

Levana let out a deep breath. She heard the whistle of the train as it approached the road crossing and the noise of everyday chatter of people leaving for work or to sell wares at the market returned to the platform. She wanted to scold Taurin for his brave foolishness or at least draw him to her breast and protect him as she'd done when he was a small child, but Taurin was a Blessed and an adult man. He might be young in his manhood, but he was proclaiming it as he stood there with one small, worn suitcase in his hand and dressed as an Alliance man. The foreign clothes didn't hide who he was. Levana looked toward her husband and oldest son. To them Taurin's power was almost as foreign as the strange Alliance fashion. They were blind to it or almost blind to it. Rafael was watching his brother with a tight line to his mouth. Taurin was more powerful, but he was the middle. They fought and would have fought more if Aneurin hadn’t constantly pled with Rafael to leave his brother alone. Her husband looked uncomfortable; his hands shoved in his pockets, a cigarette drooped from his lips. He’d ignored Taurin’s power or maybe he truly had never known. Levana had always known, but she hadn’t shared her knowledge. They all carried their country’s tragic history. The Blessed were hidden, the fewer who knew the better.

The whistle of the train blew again. It was time to board. The crowd parted around Taurin as he nodded once to his parents and older brother, only the slightest acknowledgment. He drew his younger brother close and kissed his fair hair. Taurin picked up the battered suitcase and headed toward the train. Levana watched him, her soul heavy. She feared he’d never be back, either lured by the promise of the Alliance or destroyed by those vipers who lay under the surface. Her brilliant son, the young prince of Tamor encircled by enemies in all directions. She waved as the train departed, gulping air and desperate to keep her composure, wondering if her son was pressed to the window longing for a last glimpse of home or if he was sitting on the bench in the third class compartment hunched over a battered paperback purchased on trade from a bookshop in Tingrit.

The train had disappeared and the platform was empty again. Shreds of dropped newspapers fluttered across the cracked cement and were captured by the high weeds that surrounded the platform like a cheap and ineffective barricade fence. The policeman, who had almost been the target of an angry crowd, was across the street, taking shade under the ragged awning of the post office and rural administrative offices. He stood against the large concrete planter. Its anti-terrorist architecture made them plentiful everywhere. Levana had seen pictures of those same planters in the Alliance capital. There they were bursting with flowers, colored blooms cascading over the harsh cement. Here they grew a few weeds and collected cigarette butts.

Levana turned back toward the rest of her family. She shouldn’t be standing alone; she was the strength of her family. Kern was a good husband; he provided to the best of his abilities and had blessed her with three sons, but he was unimaginative and unambitious. For him a successful small flock and simple food on the table was victory. For Taurin that was never going to be victory. She’d seen the boy look beyond their small hamlet almost before he could walk. She wanted him to have more. She was resigned to life in Tamor, life as a peasant, life with secrets buried beyond the gaze of the outsider, but for her son, the world should be his.

She took one step toward the remaining members of her family. Rafael, with rare feeling, had wrapped his arm around his younger brother and was offering the possessive protection that Aneurin had lost as the train pulled from the station. Kern was fumbling with a match, one hand cupped over his cigarette as he tried to relight it.

“My lady.”

The words were in the ancient and formal dialect that was rarely spoken today. Levana turned to study the man who had spoken the soft words. He was old was her first thought, worn by weather and work. He gripped a wooden walking staff in one hand with gnarled fingers. His hands and body had seen work. Deep furrows creased every part of his face that had been exposed to the weather. Even in high summer, he was wearing the traditional woolen pants and long sleeved tunic of Tamor. Contrary to modern fashion, he wore a house shawl over his shoulders. Levana didn’t recognize the pattern, but she knew only her house and those that had once been the guardians and guides of the prince.

“Sir,” Levana responded as the man met her scrutiny with an equally unwavering gaze. His eyes were more blue green than hazel and they seemed to look through the person as if searching for the soul and the fingerprints of the gods.

“Master Caderyn,” he replied with a slight bow. “I have seen your son.”

Levana bristled. The local master had already berated her for not sending Taurin to a master. She knew the consequences; she was not ignorant of her people. Now a master from a far away canton was going to add his voice.

“Hear me before you send me away,” the master said in a soft voice.

“Go on,” Levana said with irritation, better to find out now than have the man hunt her down and barge into her home.

“Your son’s destiny is Tamor, but he must learn the road away from home. I understand that, and I do not fault it. I will not bind a spirit who is not ready to humble himself before the call of Tamor. That will come soon enough. Tamor is home. He is Blessed. The mountains will call and he will not be able to escape. My card.” Caderyn pulled a small card from the pouch he wore at his belt. “He will need his own kind someday, so it is written and so it cannot be avoided. Good day.” He bowed again, turned, and walked away.

Levana’s eyes fell almost unwilling to the small, white rectangle of paper. The print was dark and unadorned, only a name and title and a location in the north of the country close to both the Kirpak and Shirak border. The north of the country had long been what the authorities referred to as the wild lands. It was only in the last one hundred years that the mountainous passes had come fully under the control of the central government in the Alliance capital. It was to those regions that many of the Blessed had fled the incessant pogroms of the conqueror. The mountains weren’t kind to foreigners, and tales of Alliance bones stripped bare by roving wolf packs were well known local lore.

Those regions still defended their ancient ways, and the Alliance had come to an uneasy truce with the tinkling of bells in the Shinzar temples that still clung to the rocky cliffs and the more overt signs of the Tamorian Blessed. They had found money to be a more powerful weapon than guns. They’d brought in electricity and roads and the cultural brainwashing of their television, and they’d showered the most stubborn with bribes. A promise of a snug house and a small flock in a more prosperous valley had emptied the area of much of its population. Now only the most stubborn or the most desperate stayed. 

This man, Caderyn, had stayed and the simplicity of his card did nothing to hide his status as a Blessed master. His title was printed black and clear on the white background. He was a teaching master, laying claim to the Tamor that the Alliance swore was dead centuries ago. Levana placed the card in her pocket. Her son had left for the modern world, but he was of Tamor. Levana’s eyes scanned the peaks that rose above the small village. No one escaped the mountains of Tamor. She’d been to Tingrit where Unified was spoken more than Tamorian and men ran around with suit jackets and ties around their necks and pretended to never look at their mountains. She’d seen the covert glances to the windows as the time for the ancient prayers came and went. She’d seen her own son almost scoff at the liturgy of the lost that was said before every meal, yet stand over his brother and face strangers as a son of Tamor. He’d be back—the warrior of Tamor, the son of Tamor, the prince of Tamor. 

She would wait. She would be patient; Tamor taught patience. They would be proud again, the mountain people of Tamor, not the crushed of the Alliance huddled in shadows and babbling about ancient prophesies. The gods helped those who helped themselves, and her son would help himself. She knew it in a way well beyond words and simple feelings. She wasn’t a foolish woman, prone to flight of wild imagination. She knew her son. He was all that was described in the ancient words: the warrior, not the victim, not the humbled and crushed. She’d cultivated Tamorian pride in the ways of the ancient. The master was supposed to do it, but most masters spoke in whispers and hid from the eyes of authority, their pride and power crushed under the fists of the foreign lords. She’d refused to have that fate befall her son. Royal blood still flowed in her veins; her son would not hide. She sent him into the home of the enemy without camouflage. Tamor would hide no more.


End file.
